Trump stumped in the Bronx last week. It was as cringe as expected.

Taking a break from snoozing through his criminal trial, former President Donald Trump campaigned in the Bronx last week in a supposed show of force after winning just 16% of the vote in the Crotona Park area four years ago.

If you believe that he’s going to win in AOC‘s backyard, the I suppose you think that bringing on stage Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow — two rap artist facing murder conspiracy charges — was a political masterstroke to win over Black voters. (CNN reports that Trump took a look at Sheff G’s grills and told him, “I gotta get my teeth like that. I want that to happen to me.”)

Trump, who’s already been held liable for rape and is facing four separate indictments with 88 charges, can’t stop making the case that this will help him win over African-American voters in November.

“I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time and a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump declared in February. “And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

Trump added he thinks “that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them.” (I’m not a lawyer, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to threaten the judge in their trial, because unlike this ex-president, you’ll probably go straight to jail).

While he promises brutal policies like deporting 15 to 20 million immigrants, arresting homeless people, denying trans people basic rights and health care and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses who he’s castigated as “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers,” Trump simultaneously makes these nakedly racist appeals to BIPOC voters.

A couple months ago, Trump debuted his “official” high-tops, complete with American flag logos and wrapped in gold lamé you’d expect to see in a cringe Temu ad. While most of us snickered at the tacky sneakers, conservative Detroit News columnist Bankole Thompson declared that “Trump’s gold kicks could upend Democrats” by appealing to Black men in a take that could have been mistaken for a @detnewspitchbot tweet.

And who could forget Trump’s 2016 oafish masterpiece when he posted a smiling lunchtime photo captioned with: “Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”

Will Trump end up flipping voters in key Democratic constituencies? Some polls indicate he could pull it off.

The joke eight years ago was that it was the “LOL nothing matters” election. But 2024 could just turn out to be the most nihilistic election ever.

Teachers take it on the chin

Michigan used to be a darn good place for teachers to earn a living. For 30 years, from 1969 to 1999, we consistently had some of the highest average salaries.

But a lot’s changed since then (which, for perspective, is before 40% of the Michigan Advance staff were born).

Michigan’s decade-long recession clearly took its toll. And during eight years of total GOP rule from 2011 to 2018, teachers were a favorite political punching bag. The Snyder years saw attacks on their job security and retirement, as well an onerous new requirements. Now that Democrats have their first governing trifecta in about 40 years, they’ve been rolling back many of those measures.

A new study from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) shows that if teacher salaries had kept pace with inflation since 1999, the average 2021-2022 salary would be $81,703. Instead, the average was $64,884 — a gap of $16,819.

New teachers in Michigan fare even worse, starting at $38,963, on average, in the 2021-22 school year. We’ve now plummeted to 39th of 50 states and Washington, D.C. And Michigan has the lowest starting teacher salaries among the Great Lakes states, with even Ohio beating us (barely).

How bad is it? Well, the starting salaries for brand-new reporters at many Lansing and metro Detroit outlets is higher than that — often significantly so. As someone who made $10 an hour at my first journalism job back in 2001, I’m thrilled to see that our industry has made strides in paying people what they’re worth.

But educators deserve that, too — especially with what they’ve had to endure in recent years amid right-wing freakouts over wearing masks during COVID and campaigns to ban books about LGBTQ+ issues and racial justice.

Honestly, they deserve hazard pay in dealing with helicopter parents who seem to spend more time scrolling Libs of TikTok than actually interacting with their own children.

The pay for our caregivers and teachers of young children is even more abysmal. The Michigan average childcare worker makes just $11.13 per hour and preschool teachers earn $14.89 per hour, according to a study from the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

We’re always told that children are our future. The fact that we continue to pay people who educate and guide our kids so little is a farce.